Explanation: Spiral galaxy
ESO 137-001 hurtles through massive
galaxy cluster Abell
3627 some 220 million light years away.
The distant galaxy is seen in this colorful
Hubble/Chandra
composite image through a foreground
of the Milky Way's stars toward the southern constellation
Triangulum Australe.
As the spiral speeds along
at nearly 7 million kilometers per hour, its
gas and dust are stripped away when
ram pressure with
the cluster's own hot, tenuous intracluster medium overcomes the
galaxy's gravity.
Evident in Hubble's near visible light data,
bright star clusters have formed in the
stripped material along the short, trailing blue streaks.
Chandra's X-ray data shows off the enormous extent of the
heated, stripped gas
as diffuse, darker blue trails stretching
over 400,000 light-years toward the bottom right.
The significant loss of dust and gas will make new
star formation
difficult for this galaxy.
A yellowish elliptical galaxy,
lacking in star forming dust
and gas, is just to the right of ESO 137-001 in the frame.